Within narrative accounts in International Relations (IR) which push for a historically sensitive and constructively conscious approach to religion, the values of de-essentialization and recognition are held high. A de-essentialized approach is argued to be necessary in order to break with the common – ’Westphalian’ – understanding of religion as an essentially apolitical, privatized set of internally directed beliefs, which constitutes the secular self-understanding of the discipline. Pointing to the fact that the secular character and thus the exclusion of religion from IR is contestable, the scholars continue to argue for a ’reversal’ of this exclusionary trend, emphasizing the value of recognition and inclusion of religion into IR. However, these twin imperatives of de-essentialization and recognition are, I argue, not always easily reconciled. As the imperative of de-essentialization seeks to question the very essence and stability of our concepts, the imperatives of inclusion and recognition seem to necessarily reify them. This paper asks if we are bound to reify the category of religion through our attempts to recognize it as relevant in international politics? In order to address this question, this paper will first (1) describe the different attempts which aim to include religion in IR scholarship while simultaneously avoiding the essentialization of the category itself. Secondly (2) it will analyze the possible tensions which occur between the imperatives of inclusion and de-essentialization within these different attempts and finally (3) sketch a manner in which to approach this tension differently, drawing on literature of recognition and reification (Honneth/Fraser, Markell, Connolly).
